


Reclaiming Ourselves

by Comatosejoy



Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, Blank Period, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Memory Loss, the timeline is a lil different
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23917279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comatosejoy/pseuds/Comatosejoy
Summary: When Kakashi goes missing just weeks before he is supposed to take over as the Hokage, Team 7, lead by Sakura, is tasked with finding him.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

Kakashi is to become Hokage one week after Sakura’s 18th birthday. He’d asked for the ceremony to be put off a month, but no dice. Tsunade wants to retire as soon as possible. He knows just how goddamn often Sakura feels upstaged, and when the date of his swearing-in ceremony was announced, he had looked apologetically at his former student. Sakura has never been good at hiding her feelings, and pain flickered in her wide eyes before she smiled and congratulated him. 

He requested to go on a mission, his last S-rank ever, a month before the ceremony. He is mourning the loss of action like he’d mourn the death of a good friend. He doesn’t want to sit behind a desk, doesn’t want to send people to their deaths, and he doesn’t want to sift through mountains of paperwork. He _just_ stopped exhausting all his chakra on the sharingan and now they’re throwing him into a new responsibility the moment he thought he’d get a few days to relax. 

And what a way to relax he chose. He wonders what sort of fucked up neural pathways have formed in his brain to make him crave combat this way. He feels normal only in the throes of battle. He is most comfortable when blood mists on him after he strikes an artery. He is freest when he is bounding through the trees away from Konoha and towards conflict. 

He is thirty-two, and that’s far too old to be acting the way he is. Like he has a death wish. Like a petulant child who doesn’t want to receive the highest honor a shinobi can attain. And he’s nowhere near as young as Minato was when he took the position. He’s never been as good as Minato, though. For one thing, Minato never asked to go on one last S-rank. For another, Minato was married and stable. Kakashi doubted he’d ever marry. Shinobi paired off early, had kids early. Died early, too. 

After five days of traveling by land, Kakashi and the three other jōnin assigned under him arrive on the east coast of Lightning country. There’s a storm brewing, and despite it being midday, the sky is dark and threatening. He beckons his subordinates to slow. 

“Do you feel that?” Kakashi asks. The three shinobi look at him questioningly before realization flickers over the face of one of them. He’s a sensory-type just a little older than Naruto. He certainly fought in the war. Suddenly his subordinate vomits. 

“I thought it was over,” the man says weakly. 

“We thought it was possible that Kaguya had implanted chakra somewhere in this area,” he says to the two others. There was no mistaking this inhuman energy, faint as it was. “Now I’m sure.” 

The only kunoichi of the team nods. “And you think that has something to do with the civilians going missing in the nearby villages?” 

“It’d be quite the coincidence if they weren’t connected,” he says, focusing on the chakra in the distance. “Let’s investigate.” 

They arrive at the mouth of a cave just as it starts to rain. The energy is strong enough to send a chill up Kakashi’s spine and raise gooseflesh on his arms. The cave seems to twist into two seperate caverns, and he decides to break his team into groups of two in order to search most efficiently. 

He is silent as they move through the darkness. The kunoichi he is teamed with, a woman he’d met once or twice before this mission, slinks behind him. She’s attractive, and if he weren’t her captain at the moment, he might try to flirt with her.

She trips over something and crashes into his back. Shinobi at her level aren’t clumsy, and Kakashi is immediately suspicious. When she rights herself, he shines a light on the floor. It’s a wooden arm.

“That wasn’t there before,” he says carefully, and the reality sets in that both he and Tsunade had underestimated this mission. 

He hears a shuffling, so quiet it would be imperceptible to an average person, so subtle that even a ninja might mistake it for the rain that has become a violent downpour outside. With horror, he realizes that they are surrounded by mangled wooden body parts, moving inhumanely and writhing towards them. 

He feels the genjutsu trying to infiltrate his brain before anything around him visually changes. He didn’t spend half his life with the sharingan for no reason. He breaks it with little effort and looks back only in time to see his partner willingly impale her chest on a wooden stake. The smell of blood is overwhelming, and Kakashi tries not to gag. She doesn’t look like she suffered, he notes with some relief. The genjutsu must have kept her from feeling any pain. 

These horrible half-mannequins lerch toward him, and he swears that he hears his name being whispered: 

_ka  
ka  
shi_

_ka_  
_ka  
shi_

His mind goes to the two young men in the other cavern. Why had he split them up? He’s furious at himself for miscalculating the danger so severely. He had thought that there would be, at the worst, a weak Zetsu clone that was luring civilians into the cave to eat. He resolves to fight his way to the other men and report to Tsunade. Whatever this is, it’s bad. 

He turns to look at the mouth of the cave and instead comes face-to-face with a sharingan.


	2. Chapter 2

During the war, Sakura had saved the lives of countless people. She’d never been so important, so useful, or so powerful. And now that the war is over, she should be happy that people aren’t dying and that the children of Konoha will know nothing of the hardships of battle. So she admonishes herself for being bored as she heals a genin’s split lip. She chastises herself for jonesing after that high of releasing an impossible amount of chakra into a patient, yanking them out of death’s embrace. 

Logically, she knows that her feelings are a symptom of war. She’s treated enough patients to see that shinobi have trouble adjusting to peacetime. But her circumstances are unique. Tsunade has taken her off missions, telling her to keep her head down and work regular shifts at the hospital. She’s retiring soon, after all, and Sakura needs to be ready to assume the responsibilities of running the day-to-day operations. 

Sakura stifles a yawn as she sifts through piles of paperwork. It’s after five and she should have gone home, but there’s so much to catch up on. And it’s only going to get worse when Tsunade hands the hospital over to her. There’s a knock on her office door, and she glances up in time to see Naruto and Ino walk in. It’s odd to see them together, and Sakura is taken aback a little. 

“We’re going out for drinks,” Ino says like it’s an order. 

Sakura frowns. “Next time, guys. I’ve got way too much on my plate.” 

“Come on, Sakura, I’m buying,” Naruto says.

“Considering how much money you make, I would insist that you do,” she answers dryly. “But seriously. I have so much work--” 

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence before Ino snatches up the papers on the desk and, quick as lightning, seals them in a scroll. 

“I’ll give these back tomorrow. You’re coming out.”

Sakura glowers at the empty spot on her desk before sighing. “Okay. But only because you’re forcing me.” 

“Great! I’ll pick you up from your place at seven tonight,” Ino says before turning on her heel and marching out. 

Naruto stays in the doorway. “Sorry about that,” he says, some cross between embarrassed and amused. 

“Her, I understand. But you?” 

“Come on, Sakura. I miss you! All you ever do is work. I see Sasuke more than I see you.” 

She feels her heartbeat quicken at that. She knows he had returned to the village a few weeks ago, but she had not seen him. He hadn’t sought her out and she isn’t about to debase herself by hunting him down and demanding his attention. If he wanted to come to her, he already would have. 

“Oh? And how is he?” Sakura asks, trying and failing to keep her voice level. 

“I knew that would get you!” Naruto says, and if he were within reach she’d smack him upside the head. “He’s a bastard, as always. He asked about you.” 

“What did he say?” Sakura asks, a blush spreading across her cheeks. 

“He just asked how you were. I told him to ask you himself,” he says, glancing at the clock on her wall. “I’ve got to take care of some stuff. See you tonight!” 

“Not like you’ve given me any choice in the matter!” Sakura calls after him as he retreats down the hall.

______

By the time Ino fetches her, Sakura has let the stress of missing hours worth of work fully sink in. Ino zips around her in the foyer of her one-bedroom apartment, muttering _this won’t do_ s and _could use some work_ s. 

“Can I help you, Ino-Pig?” Sakura questions, watching the blonde dig into her purse. 

“Just making a few adjustments,” she answers, pulling out a few tubes of makeup and, before Sakura could protest, running an applicator coated in goo over Sakura’s lips. She moves on to curl her friend’s lashes and coat them in mascara. 

“Is this necessary?” Sakura complains before Ino takes a step back and assesses her work. 

“Much better. Let’s get going,” she says, offering her arm for Sakura to take. 

“So where do you plan on holding me hostage all evening?” Sakura asks as they make their way through the cobblestone streets of a newly-built neighborhood. It’s a balmy evening and the blossoms are just starting to open on the trees around them. Sakura breathes in the fresh scent, watching the world wake back up after a long winter. 

Ino finally directs her to an izakaya and leads her through the curtains. It’s quite crowded, even for the weekend. And then it hits her. She nearly turns back around to bolt when she realizes what’s happening. 

“Surprise!” 

“But my birthday--” Sakura begins, looking into the sea of familiar faces all smiling at her. 

“Isn’t for another week? We know. But with the Hokage stuff happening so soon, we decided to throw you a party now,” Ino says. 

“Where is Kakashi-sensei, anyway?” 

Naruto slides up next to her. “He’s still on a mission. Must be top-secret, because it took me an hour to get that much out of Granny Tsunade.” 

Sakura must look disappointed because he grabs her by the shoulders and flashes a smile bright enough to rival the sun. 

“But everyone else is here! And I paid for an open bar,” he says. “Even Sasuke showed up.” 

Sakura nods, a little too caught off-guard to process everything Naruto just said. 

“I’m going to get myself a drink,” she says, and makes her way to the bar. Everyone around her seems so happy. And all she can think about is how the last time they were all together like this, they were fighting for their lives. 

“What’s the most expensive sake you have?” Sakura asks the bartender. 

“Right out of the gate, huh?” A voice from behind teases. She spins around. 

“Sasuke,” she breathes, before getting her bearings. “Naruto’s paying.” 

“Oh. We’ll have two, then,” he orders, giving her a conspiratorial look. 

The bartender sets down two cups and two bottles. Sasuke pours her sake for her, just like anyone else would, and for a moment she gapes at the normalcy of it all. This man who tried to kill her countless times, who broke her heart, who tore Naruto’s arm off, is still adhering to social norms. It occurs to her that she’s been looking a second too long, because the slight uptick of his eyebrow says _Don’t make me regret this._

She pours his cup, and they drink together in silence. He refills her cup and she his. 

“Naruto is infamous for not being able to hold his liquor,” she says, casually swirling her drink in her hand. “Last time we were out, he somehow lost his own pants.” 

She sees the corner of Sasuke’s mouth twitch in amusement. She sets her cup back on the bar, and he pours her another round. The alcohol has made her belly warm and she’s suddenly not so concerned about the piles of paperwork accumulating on her desk. 

When Ino drags her over to blow out candles, Sakura stumbles behind her friend, grinning. It’s around midnight when Naruto goads her into an arm wrestling contest. Just as she’s settling in across from her opponent, her arm already coursing with charka, she feels a hand on her shoulder. 

“This only ends badly,” says Sasuke sternly. “You’re both going home.” 

Sakura and Naruto look at each other and both gleefully mock, “You’re both going home!” 

“Come on,” he says, and something about his tone makes them follow him into the street.

“Hey,” Naruto says in between hiccups. “Shouldn’t you be drunk, too? I saw you drink an entire bottle of that really expensive stuff!”

“He _is_ drunk, Naruto. Look at him. He’s a mess,” Sakura says, elbowing Naruto, and gesturing at the stoic man in front of them. He catches on and grins drunkenly. 

“Oh, yeah. Sasuke, Get a hold of yourself!”

“You’re embarrassing us, Sasuke!” 

“Sasuke--” Naruto begins, but quiets as Sasuke turns to glare daggers into him. 

“Naruto’s place is first,” Sasuke says, pushing his friend towards the building. 

“Bye, guys! I love you!” 

She practically hears Sasuke’s eyes roll and suppresses a giggle. 

“Thank you for walking us,” she says when they hear Naruto’s front door slam shut. He has already begun walking and she struggles to keep up. 

“It’s on my way,” he replies.

“Can you walk a little slower?” Sakura asks. “You’re almost a foot taller than me, you know.” 

“Stop being short,” he answers, but slows so that he’s only a little ahead of her. There it is, proof of his intoxication: a joke. 

“Wait a minute, how do you know where I live?” 

“Hard to not know where everyone lives,” he says, pulling his hair back so she can get a look at the Rinnegan. “Especially when I’m so familiar with their chakra.” 

She blushes a little at the acknowledgement of their closeness, but quickly shrugs it off. It was a statement of fact, not a compliment. She doesn’t like that there’s still something in the back of her head that yearns for his approval. She does not like that he can surely tell that her pulse quickens in his presence. And she certainly doesn’t like that he knew exactly where to find her the entire time he’s been back in the village and never tried.

They’ve arrived at her front door and she’s about to give him a piece of her mind when he gently pokes her forehead. 

“I’ll see you,” he says. And then he’s gone. 

She unlocks her apartment. Without any distractions, she’s back to thinking about the monotony that her daily routine has become. No amount of alcohol can be consumed to make her excited about signing forms and healing minor injuries. 

She doesn’t bother undressing and as soon as she hits her mattress, she’s out.

______

The morning is cruel when it comes and there’s a banging on her door. It pounds in time with her head and she stumbles towards the noise. She grasps the doorknob and pulls it hard. Groggy and hungover, she accidentally uses her monstrous strength, ripping the door off its hinges. 

“Great,” she grumbles before looking at the cowering chunin before her. 

“L-Lady Fifth is s-s-summoning you,” the boy stammers. 

“Is she expecting me right away?” Sakura asks, grimacing at the bright sunlight. 

“She said it was urgent,” the boy answers.

Sakura pinches the bridge of her nose. She leans the door against the frame and steps into her shoes and glances down at her dress. She's seen Tsunade hungover plenty of times and figures there’s no shame in showing up in last night’s clothes. 

She sets off towards the Hokage Tower, stopping once to dry heave before forcing healing chakra into her system. 

When she enters Tsunade’s office, Sai and Sasuke are already there. She has a bad feeling about this, and when Naruto stumbles in after her, the feeling only grows worse. 

“You both look disgusting this morning,” Sai says, nodding in their direction, and Sakura hears Sasuke exhales through his nose in a way that sounds suspiciously like a snicker. Sakura takes pity on Naruto, who is turning a sickly shade of green, and places a healing hand on his forehead. 

Tsunade is the last to enter. She makes her way to her desk, avoiding eye contact with everyone. It’s unnerving, and Sakura knows that whatever is happening is extremely serious. The energy in the room is not unlike how it had been when Jiraiya had died, and her mind immediately flashes to Kakashi. 

_Oh, God._

She seems to be the first to have figured it out, earning a questioning look from the men when she says, “Please tell me he isn’t dead.” 

Tsunade would normally bristle with pride at how clever her protégé is. But the situation is too dire for that. 

“We don’t know,” she says. “Men, as Sakura has already figured out, this is about Kakashi Hatake. He has gone missing in action.”


	3. Chapter 3

Initially, the Zukin gang had planned to rob Shiro. He had been dressed in expensive-looking clothing and wandering through the forest like he was lost. Easy target. That is, until they had actually tried to attack him. Despite the fact that he seemed to be suffering from a serious head injury, he kicked everyone’s ass. Wasn’t nice about it, either. He’d lob insults with his punches, sending every opponent back with ribs as bruised as their egos. And if there’s one thing the Zukin respect, it’s an absolute fucking bastard. So they had finally approached him, this lunatic with wild, silvery hair, brain damage, and mean taijutsu skills, and asked him to join them. 

No one knew what Shiro’s real name was, least of all Shiro. He couldn’t tell you where he was from, or why he’d been in the middle of nowhere when the Zukin found him. But he was charming, laid-back, with a strategic mind and handsome face. Within a week he was second-in-command and leading ambushes on wealthy travelers. 

“Two klicks east,” he says to the team he’s commanding. He sniffs the air. “Two aristocrats with a shinobi team escorting them.” 

His team moves through the trees expertly. Since he’d joined the Zukin, he’d started the members on training exercises. Chakra control, taijutsu. Basic techniques, really. He’d turned what was once a ragtag crew of misfits and minor criminals into a well-oiled machine. 

They descend upon the carriage. The shinobi look young, and Shiro wouldn’t be surprised if they were genin. That’s not good news as far as the payload is concerned. Genin aren’t usually hired to protect anything all that great. But the village on the coast relies on the money the Zukin brings in, and something is better than nothing. 

“I’ll take care of the captain. This is a no-kill mission, got it?” Shiro barks. It goes without saying. All of the raids that Shiro leads forbid unnecessary casualties. 

The captain on the escort mission is older, in his mid-twenties, and Shiro expects a fight. He doesn’t get one. Instead, the captain takes off into the forest. The fucking coward. 

Shiro hazards a glance at his men. The genin have already been subdued, and the men are scouring the carriage and putting the fear of God into the fat aristocrats seated inside. Good. 

He bounds after the deserter, catching up to him easily. He considers toying with the man but thinks better of it. He’s not that sadistic. He knocks the man out and throws him over his shoulder. If the man hadn’t run, this would have been a simple mugging. But Shiro is pissed off. The audacity of this man to leave _children_ behind like that makes his blood boil. 

When he returns, the three genin and two aristocrats are on their knees outside the carriage. He winces at the rage behind the one girl’s wide eyes. It reminds him of….nothing. His mind searches for a memory that isn’t there. 

“Anything good?” Shiro asks. His men produce some ryō and a little jewelry. 

“Not great,” one of his men says. “This is only enough to feed one family, maybe two.” 

Shiro shakes his head. It figures. He dumps the coward in front of the genin, and he is not gentle. The man stirs awake, Shiro’s foot resting on his chest and weighed down with chakra in case there’s another escape attempt. 

“I’m terribly sorry, kids. We’re not going to hurt you,” Shiro smiles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Is this your squad captain?” 

The girl nods. Fully conscious now, the man squirms underneath Shiro’s heavy boot. 

“If it were up to me, I’d kill him for deserting,” he says. “But it’s not up to me. I think it should be up to the ones he abandoned.” 

“Killing a fellow shinobi is treason,” the girl says. “It doesn’t matter what he did.” 

“Ah, yes, the Shinobi Rules. You know, those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum,” Shiro muses. There’s a far-off look in his eye. 

“Boss?” One of his men says. Shiro snaps back to reality. 

“Well, we really must get going. But I’ll leave you with a parting gift. See, there may come a day when your deserter decides to flee from enemies who are not as kind as my men.” Shiro moves his foot down the length of the man’s thigh. His boot rests on the back of the man’s knee. “What kind of man would I be, if I let this happen again? I can’t have a genin’s blood on my hands, after all.” 

The man seems to understand where this is going, and whimpers pathetically below Shiro. 

“We can’t have that, can we?” Shiro asks, and breaks the man’s knee with a quick and powerful stomp. He’ll have a hard time finding a healer talented enough to fix the injury. “We just have to make it so he can’t run anywhere ever again.” 

The deserter’s pained shrieks cause birds to take flight out of the trees above them.

______

As Shiro and his men fly through the trees back to basecamp, he thinks of that little girl. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen, and something about her broad forehead and doe eyes sends a shiver up his spine.

And though he knows better than to ignore his instincts, he decides it’s best to pretend that he hadn’t felt strangely paternal back there. It had made him sloppy. He should have kept focused on the mission, but instead he punished a stranger on behalf of some children. Good shinobi don’t let emotions get in the way of the objective like that.


	4. Chapter 4

Sakura wakes before her alarm goes off. She basks in the pleasure of a full night’s rest before happily shrugging out of her pajamas and into the shower. She shouldn’t be this giddy. Kakashi is missing, afterall. She should be worried. But worrying never recovered a lost teammate. 

She hasn’t left Konoha since the war ended, and in truth, she has longed to feel the wind in her hair, longed for the adrenaline she feels when her kunai hit its target. Who could blame her for getting a little excited for her mission? If she were honest, she’d admit to being jealous of Naruto’s endless string of lucrative missions. A small part of her had been jealous of Sasuke, too. It took a certain amount of privilege, of entitlement, to just _walk away_ as he had. She wonders what hell would rain down on her if she waltzed into Tsunade’s office and said, _I think I’ll shirk all my responsibilities and wander around the world for a year to find myself._

The bag she’d packed the night before rests beside her newly-repaired door, and after retrieving lunch from her refrigerator, she slings the back over her shoulder and heads to the gates. 

“Is this the first mission you’ve ever been the leader of?” Sai asks, the first to arrive besides herself. 

“Why, are you going to make it difficult? Haze me?” Sakura answers, quirking an eyebrow. 

“I won’t need to, with the traitor and Naruto on our team,” he says. 

Tsunade hadn’t wanted to assign Team 7 to this. It was too personal for them. But she knew that once they’d found out about the situation, nothing would stop them from tearing the world apart to find their missing sensei. It was either assign them this mission or have her two most valuable shinobi--Naruto, who earns the village a third of its income, and Sakura, the future head of the hospital--go AWOL. 

“Two weeks ago, Kakashi Hatake was tasked with investigating a series of missing civilians in Lighting Country. This, coupled with rumors of unusual chakra in the area, leads us to believe that Kaguya may have something to do with this,” Tsunade had informed them yesterday. 

Simply mentioning the name of the woman who nearly ended the world had sent a shiver up Sakura’s spine. Beside her, Naruto clenched and unclenched his fist.

“Communication with Kakashi ceased one week ago. Following protocol, I will be sending you in as a recovery team. Your dossiers will be waiting for you at your respective homes. You leave tomorrow. Sakura, you’ll lead this operation.” 

“Me?” Sakura asked, pointing at her own chest. She has never led a mission. Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn that she saw Sasuke tense up. But Tsunade hadn’t entertained Sakura’s bemusement. 

“You’re dismissed.” 

Her confusion had not lasted long. Now that she stands at the gate beside Sai, watching dawn break, she realizes that she was, indeed, the best choice for the position. The only choice, really. 

When Sasuke and Naruto arrive, she looks at them disapprovingly. 

“You’re late,” she says, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “Okay. Sai, we’ll be flying on your ink creations, two to a bird. Sasuke and Naruto may not pair up.” 

“I want to ride with Sasuke,” Naruto complains. 

“I can just summon my hawk,” Sasuke adds. 

“I want to ride on Sasuke’s hawk, Sakura.” 

Sakura closes her eyes and inhales, centering herself. When she opens her eyes, she swings her arm back and punches the earth with enough force to knock both men to the ground. Had it not been for the element of surprise, she likely wouldn’t have gotten them off their feet so easily. She bends down between them. 

“This is not a negotiation. You will do exactly what I say, and you will like it. If either of you try to argue with me during this mission, I will report that you disobeyed a direct order, and you will be taken off active duty until there is a thorough investigation. Do you know how long those take?” 

“They take six months, Sakura!” Sai helpfully provides from behind her. 

“Ah, bureaucracy. Can you go six months without an income, Naruto? I mean, I know ramen’s cheap, but--” 

“Okay, Sakura, okay! I’ll be good, I promise,” Naruto says as he scrambles to his feet. 

She lets her gaze rest on Sasuke. “Are we clear?” Her voice does not shake. She does not shrink under Sasuke’s infamous glare. 

“Clear,” he spits out. She offers her hand to pull him up. He does not accept, choosing to struggle to his feet instead. 

“I will go with Sai,” Sasuke says when he is upright.

______

By foot, their journey deep into Lightning Country would have taken five days. By Sai’s creations, the journey will be markedly shorter.

She can hear Naruto’s stomach grumble around noon, and she signals to Sai to bring the creations down to land. They have been flying for a little over five hours, and they’ve more than earned a short break. Once they reach the earth, a small meadow among so much forest, Sai releases the jutsu and the ink creations dissolve. They are still in Fire Country, just barely south of the border. 

Sakura sits cross-legged in the grass, digging through her bag. She pulls her bento out, Naruto looking on enviously. Of course he didn’t pack himself anything to eat. He never does. 

“You didn’t think I forgot about you, did you?” Sakura asks, producing a second lunch from her pack. His eyes light up and he pulls her in for a bone-crushing hug. 

“Sakura! You’re the best,” he says. “I’ll eat this when I get back.” 

Naruto sprints into the forest, never one to be demure about needing a bathroom break. Sai had faded into the trees, too, presumably for the same reason, but without drawing unnecessary attention to himself. 

With only Sasuke in her presence, she focuses on her lunch with too much intensity. She can feel him staring at her and her ears grow hot. 

“I’d like to summon my hawk,” he says. 

Sakura drops her chopsticks and sighs heavily. “Do you think my choices thus far have been arbitrary, Sasuke?” 

His eyes narrow. “Explain, then.” 

“Naruto never reads the dossier. Sai always does. And you,” she gestures at him, “you’re a wildcard. I don’t know if you’ve read it or not. If we get into trouble, I don’t want the two idiots who are least-informed to be partnered up together. You aren’t summoning your hawk, and you aren’t riding with Naruto.” 

“You’ve changed,” he says, almost sounding impressed. “I’d like to switch with Naruto, then.” 

She feels her cheeks get hot and hates her traitorous sympathetic nervous system for its involuntary responses. And Sasuke notices it, too. 

“I have decided that I do not like Sai,” he explains. It has nothing to do with Sakura. Of course. It’s disappointing, but she also makes a mental note to ask Sai what the hell he said to Sasuke to elicit such a response later. Not that she couldn’t venture several amusing guesses. 

She watches Sasuke open the bento he must have packed for himself just as Naruto returns. The blond sits next to Sakura and wolfs down his own lunch, then lets his eyes linger on hers. 

“I have an extra,” she says, pulling out a third lunch. “You bottomless pit.” 

Naruto gratefully accepts it, unlatching the lid. “Why are there so many tomatoes in this one?” 

“No reason,” she says quietly, careful to avoid looking at Sasuke, and stands to walk into the woods.


	5. Chapter 5

Cha-iro formed the Zukin after the Third Shinobi War. The village he had grown up in had been decimated. He and his sister had barely survived, hiding in the woods all night as soldiers burnt down every house in sight. They walked to the neighboring village the next day, dirty and hungry and shell-shocked. 

Cha-iro and his sister lived with other war orphans after that. There was certainly no shortage of them. Every day, a new child would show up wanting something to eat and a place to sleep. Eventually, the village was nothing but the elderly who lost their sons and daughters to the war and the children those sons and daughters had left behind. And Cha-iro found himself leading them all.

Once a fishing town, the steady increase in pollution and fishing restrictions made it impossible to earn a living honestly. And why would you want to, when it was the wealthy who waged the war that killed an entire generation? So Cha-iro doesn’t feel the least bit bad about the ambushes. He didn’t feel remorse ripping a golden necklace off the neck of a wealthy woman who thought she’d be safe because she’d shelled out some ryō for a team of children to risk their lives just so she could travel. And now that he has Shiro, whose skill seems to know absolutely no bounds, he didn’t mind sending his men on more _ambitious_ missions. 

“Our scouts report a group of shinobi traveling by air, riding on some kind of strange summoning creatures,” Cha-iro says to his men. “They appear to be highly-skilled. I bet their kunai alone would fetch a hefty sum. Think you can handle that, Shiro?” 

Shiro smirks, “I could use a challenge.”

______

Shiro is aware of everything around him. The soil under his feet, the archers he planted in each tree, the distant crash of the waves on the rocky shore, his men crouched in the bushes, the sun in the east. God, he loves that sun in the east. It’s going to blind his opponents.

He sees the targets in the sky and watches his men tense up. He waits until the beasts are just overhead, and imitates the chirping of a bush-warbler. The signal. When the archers hear it, they aim their bows. He calls once more. They fire, and suddenly creatures dissipate. 

One of the shinobi summons a hawk, swooping over to collect another. One of them throws a kunai with a rope attached and clings to the treetops. But the fourth continues to plummet to the ground. He can see her, a slight woman with pink hair. She’s not going to make it, and he realizes that his legs are moving before he even has a chance to make a decision. He bounds through the trees and catches her right before she hits the unforgiving branches. 

Her eyes flutter open. “K-Kakashi?” 

He blanches. Kakashi? _Scarecrow?_ It makes his pulse quicken. There’s something dreadful, something oppressive about that word and in his mind, like stones skipping, he hears 

_ka_  
_ka  
shi_

_ka_  
_ka  
shi_

He shakes his head. That was nothing. There’s no memory to associate the noise with. He decides to ignore his instincts, just like he did a few days ago with that genin team. Something about this kunoichi makes his stomach twist, but good shinobi don’t let emotions get in the way of the objective like this. 

Her teammates are nearby, yelling at each other about the woman he is standing over. He reaches into her holster and pulls out her weapons and ryō. He counts the bills silently, pockets them, and moves to take off into the trees. 

“Kakashi-sensei! Come back,” she calls after him, and Shiro pauses only for a moment, turning to look at the woman. She thinks _he’s_ Kakashi? Her wide eyes plead with him. He sees tears welling there, and his knees nearly buckle. _What kind of high-level shinobi betray their emotions so easily?_ , he thinks, like he has any right to judge. 

After all, he did just fuck up this whole mission out of an impulse he couldn’t control. And if what he found on the woman was any indication, his men wouldn’t have had to work for months if they’d been successful. 

Her teammates are dangerously close now, and he books it out of there.


	6. Chapter 6

“Looks like just some petty thieves that got spooked.” 

“Where the hell is she?” 

Sakura feels like she’s been hit by a freight train. If it had been any other shinobi attacking and then rescuing her, she’d be hot on their trail. But it hadn’t been just anyone. It had been Kakashi. 

“Calm down, I can sense her chakra.” 

Why had he looked at her like that? 

“Sakura! There you are! Didn’t you hear us calling for you?” Naruto asks, suddenly beside her and gripping her shoulder. 

“Kakashi. I saw Kakashi. He stopped my fall,” she says, trying to stand. Her legs feel like jelly. 

“Check for a concussion,” Sasuke says, and Sai obeys, bending over to look into her eyes. 

“He stole my money,” she says, her voice laced with bewilderment. 

“Her pupils appear normal,” Sai says. “I’ll check for a fever.”

“He wasn’t wearing a mask. It took me a second to recognize him,” she says, trying to make sense of what she just saw.

“She isn’t under a genjutsu, either,” Sasuke says, his usually-neutral tone slightly betraying frustration. Only slightly. 

Sai’s hand moves to her forehead and she swats it away. “I don’t have a concussion. I’m not running a fever. I know what I saw.” 

“I didn’t sense his chakra, Sakura,” Naruto says carefully. 

“That’s what I’m saying! His chakra was all messed up! It was like--he looked at me like--” 

She claps a hand over her mouth and gasps. “He doesn’t know who he is.”

Already, she knows that too much time has passed. There is no catching up to him now. She could catch any other shinobi in her sleep if they had this three-minute head start, but not Kakashi Hatake. Not the man who covered his tracks expertly even when he _wasn’t_ being trailed. 

And she can’t stand the nervous way that the men are looking at each other, like she’s crazy. How Sasuke and Sai have been talking about her like she’s not there. 

“Obviously, air travel leaves us vulnerable. We travel on foot from here on in. There’s a village 6 klicks east. We will stay there and do some reconnaissance.” 

She doesn’t wait for them to respond, crouching down as a sprinter might, before using the monstrous strength in her thighs to propel herself quickly into the trees. She realizes, after her feet move from branch to branch nimbly, breaking the thinner ones with her power, that she’s showing off on purpose. Should a captain of a team feel so desperate to prove that they are deserving of their position? 

Tsunade had made her the captain, and she rarely made mistakes as the Hokage. Sakura had earned her position by being the smartest of the group, because Sasuke and Naruto are engaged in a never-ending dick-measuring contest, because Sakura knows her team inside and out. She relaxes her pace slightly. Damn her sense of inferiority.

______

The inn they check into is run-down in the way that seaside establishments often are. The paint is chipping and there’s mold in the corners. There’s a fist-sized dent in the wall in her room where it looks like some past guest had lost their temper, and Sakura eyes it as she unrolls her bedroll over the twin-sized mattress. 

“Smart,” says Sai, unrolling his own on the bed across from her. “You never know about these places.” 

They hear a knock on the door and Naruto bursts through without waiting for a response. Sasuke follows behind him. 

“You can’t barge in on me like that, you idiot! What if I had been changing?” Sakura slaps the back of Naruto’s head. 

“Ow! C’mon Sakura, I knew Sai was in here!”

“Sakura has changed in the same room as me before,” Sai says, not bothering to look up from where he’s straightening out his bedding. 

Naruto’s jaw drops to the floor and Sasuke’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly.

“Is this? Are you? Is he,” Naruto makes a circle with his thumb and pointer finger and moves his other index finger into the circle. The crude gesture makes Sakura’s face go red and this time it’s Sasuke’s turn to smack Naruto’s head. 

“Why would I date someone who’s spent the last three years calling me ugly?” Sakura asks at the exact same time Sai says, “Why would I sleep with someone so ugly?” 

Sasuke’s hands clench into fists, and Sakura doesn’t miss the disgust that flickers behind his eyes. 

“He just turns the other way! I know he wouldn’t try to peek,” Sakura says, trying to diffuse the situation and level an accusation Naruto’s way all at once. 

“You know I wouldn’t still do that!” Naruto begins to argue before feeling Sasuke’s heavy hand on his shoulder. 

“Let’s listen to what our team captain has to say about reconnaissance,” he grinds out, clearly deeply uncomfortable. 

Pleased at what sounds almost like a vote of confidence, Sakura digs through her notes. 

“Okay, I’ve given you each an assignment for gathering intelligence today,” she starts, grinning as she peers over her papers.


	7. Chapter 7

“I take full responsibility for my mission’s failure,” Shiro says, hanging his head. 

“Shiro, you’re too hard on yourself. None of our men died, and you came away with a ridiculous payload,” Cha-iro says, clapping a comforting hand on Shiro’s back. “And the fact that they didn’t seek you out after the ambush is a good thing.” 

“There’s something else,” he says, debating whether he should say it or not. “The kunoichi called me Kakashi.” 

“Kakashi? There’s a famous name,” Cha-iro says. “I think we’d know if you were the Copy Nin. For one thing, he has a sharingan in his left eye.” 

“There could be more than one Kakashi,” Shiro reasons, but seems to accept what Cha-iro says. Kakashi is an unusual name, after all. 

“Look, there’s a reason I asked you to report to me immediately after your mission. Another scout has gone missing.” 

“That’s the third one this week,” Shiro says, his brow furrowing. This is troubling news. “On top of the villagers, how many does that make?” 

“Nearly fifty since the war ended, and it seems to be happening more frequently,” Cha-iro responds grimly. Both men shudder, so used to the ugly nature of war and sacrifice. Peacetime is supposed to be easier. Not that anything is ever easy when you’re struggling to make ends meet. 

“Do you think there’s any truth to those ghost stories I hear the men telling?” Shiro asks, knowing that most legends hold at least a grain of truth. 

“No, of course not. Be serious, Shiro. I need you to investigate this. We can’t lose anyone else.”

______

Despite Cha-iro’s words, he still can’t get that kunoichi’s voice out of his head, that shocked _Kakashi?_ rolls through his mind endlessly, and, as he’s walking back to his barracks, he gets an idea. 

He makes it to the spot where he’d caught the kunoichi as the sun begins to dip down in the west. All four of the shinobi had traveled east from that point, and only two out of the four had made an effort to cover their tracks. He follows the trail straight back to the village that the Zukin protects. He locks in on the woman’s chakra signal and abandons the trail. She’s on the street with the three men. They’re all dressed as civilians. He watches them as they speak in tones so hushed that only elite shinobi could eavesdrop. 

“Just find a girl our age and let her talk,” says the woman. “Ask her about the missing people.” 

Shiro finds this intriguing. He apparently has the same goal as this group. 

“No,” says the most handsome of the group. Shiro would have chosen the exact same job for him, if he were trying to gather information.

“Yes, Sasuke, be a good whore,” another man in their company says. That causes the woman to bite back a laugh. The handsome one barely conceals his rage at the comment. Or was it the woman’s reaction? Shiro can’t tell. 

“I can talk to the girls,” a blond man offers. 

“That’s sweet, Naruto, but no. There’s an unusually high population of elderly people in this town and honestly, I don’t know what it is, but old people like you.” 

That was true. Cha-iro took in anyone who needed it, and there were plenty of older folks who moved here after their families died in the last war. 

“I’m still not doing it,” the handsome one all but rasps out. 

A group of teenage girls pass them, giggling as they see the handsome one. Kismet. 

“Ladies?” The woman calls after them. “This is my brother. He’s shy. Can you show him around?” 

She pushes the man towards them, and the man looks irate as the girls circle him and drag him away. 

“He’ll never forgive you for that,” the blond man says, grinning. 

“He forgave you for ripping his arm off,” she retorts. “Now go find some geezer to win over.” 

When it’s down to two, the final man says, “What will you have me do?” 

“Just sneak around in the shadows, Sai. See if there’s anything weird about the village.” 

“And what will you do?” 

“I’m not sure. Maybe get one of these ammateur shinobi to flirt with me and spill their guts,” she says casually. 

“Well, you should do a henge to make yourself look cute,” the man says, dodging the fist she aims his way, and laughing at her. He slips into the next alleyway, essentially disappearing. The woman stops in front of an izakaya. 

Shiro performs a henge to disguise himself and follows her in. She orders a bottle of sake and two cups. She sits at a table by herself, looking forlorn. Stood up, maybe? He can see why she is the leader of the group. She’s cunning, strategic, and, if the branches she shattered on her way to the village is any indication, extremely powerful. Shiro admires the way she works, like how one might admire a master painter creating a new piece, like how one might watch a dancer expertly pirouette. And she is an expert. 

He wonders if approaching her would be too much. If he should just observe some other man fall into her carefully laid trap. But that would give him less control over the situation. Then, just like earlier in the forest, he finds his legs moving on their own accord.


	8. Chapter 8

“May I?” A man says, gesturing to one of the cups and the bottle. 

“Please,” Sakura says, watching the man’s deft hands pour her cup.

“I don’t mean to intrude, but it’s bad luck to pour your own, you know,” he smiles sheepishly. 

“I hadn’t planned on having to,” she says. “But it appears I’ve been stood up.” 

He sits in front of her as he hears that. “I don’t believe that.” 

“You’re too kind,” she says, pouring sake into the second cup and offering it to the man. She’s always enjoyed the ritual of it. She and Ino used to practice when they were children, it being something they taught in kunoichi classes. How to charm, how to pour, how to zero in on what the target wants in a woman and be it immediately. “I’m Sakura, by the way.” 

“I haven’t seen you in the village before. Are you just passing through?” 

This man is a ninja, and not an amateur one, as she’d expected. She’d seen it in his movements, in the way he interacted with the world. That poses some difficulty. While kunoichi are taught to manipulate men, the boys are taught how to avoid manipulation. At least she could stack the deck in her favor. She’d done nothing to give away her status as a shinobi, and the fact that men often underestimate her is a weapon in her arsenal.

“My village was destroyed during the war,” she says, looking down at her hands. “My brothers and I have been searching for a place to settle ever since.” 

“You’ve been looking all this time? You must be quite picky,” the man jokes. 

“Do you think this place would be to my liking? Keep in mind that I’m a tough sell,” she says, her tone light. 

He leans over the table. “If you don’t mind ghost stories.” His voice is soft, drawing her in. 

“I love them.”

______

The spot where the village stands was chosen by a pair of brothers. Tsugaru, the oldest, had a wife who fell pregnant during their journey and travel became more and more difficult. It had been the youngest of the two, Kaoru, who had insisted that the group stop where they did.

The soil in the area was bad. Farming was difficult and the crops the settlers did manage to grow were puny. The sea was more treacherous than the fish it yielded were worth, and fishing was limited to dropping crab traps along the rocky shoreline. 

Tsugaru and Kaoru were collecting these traps one day when, from the mouth of a cave, Tsugaru was sure he could hear his name being whispered: 

_tsu  
ga  
ru_

_tsu  
ga  
ru_

Tsugaru had always been a pragmatist, and ignored the whisper. He could write it off as the wind whipping past him. That is, until he saw a flicker of light emanating from the cave. 

He did not like where they settled and, always ambitious, was unhappy with his lot in life. Sparing a glance at his brother, he went to investigate. It could be people camping out, waiting to raid their village. As he neared it, he felt gooseflesh on his arms, and he could no longer deny the whisper he heard. 

“Who goes there?” Tsugaru had called out. 

A ghost stepped out of the shadows, then. All white. White eyes, white skin, white hair, white kimono. Its legs were twisted and broken, and each step took effort. The whisper had come from it. 

“What do you want?” Tsugaru had asked. He was cautious. Have you ever heard of a happy spirit drawing you into a dark cave? 

“You crave prosperity,” the ghost had said. “I can give it to you.” 

Tsugaru’s greed outweighed his caution, and he stepped forward. “How?” 

“I can make the ground fertile. I can make the fish jump out of the sea into your arms.” 

“And what do you ask for in return?” 

“Plant this seed in your village,” the ghost said. “Nourish the tree that grows from it, and bring me to the tree when it has grown solid.” 

Tsugaru accepted the seed. He placed it in his bag and continued to check the crab traps. He did not tell Kaoru or his wife, and that night he planted the tree in the middle of all his failed crops. 

The seed became a sapling within days, but the people of the village began falling ill. Tsugaru was not blind to the fact that the illness seemed to take those in close proximity to the tree. He did not voice his suspicions and moved his family as far away from the tree as possible. The crop yield was very good that year.

The tree grew in tandem with Tsugaru’s wealth. Fish, indeed, jumped out of the ocean and into his arms. But he was not content to be a mere farmer all his life, and he returned to the cave. 

“How do I make the tree grow bigger?” Tsugaru asked. A grin broke across the ghost’s face. 

That night, Tsugaru led his brother out to the field. 

“There’s something I’ve been keeping from you, brother,” Tsugaru said, stopping in front of the growing tree. 

“Does it have to do with this random tree growing in the middle of our crops?” Kaoru joked affably. 

In the moonlight, Kaoru could barely see the glint of metal before he felt something warm and wet running down his chest. He fell to his knees, his blood soaking the dirt. And the tree grew. And Tsugaru, watching, imagined the riches he would gain. 

But they were not alone in the field that night. Kaoru’s wife had long ago grown suspicious of Tsugaru. She followed him, from a distance, when he left the village to those caves. She watched the way he behaved around that tree, and her skin would crawl whenever she was near it. 

She bit her hand to keep from screaming as she watched Kaoru bleed out. And when Tsugaru left, she stumbled out from her hiding spot and wept over Kaoru’s body. She glared at the tree, whose roots drank up her husband’s blood, and cursed. 

She retrieved an axe and began hacking at the tree. When it fell, she dragged the tree down to the rocky shore. The ghost saw her, and saw the tree. 

“Do you see the evil you have brought upon my village?” 

Her eyes were wild as she heaved the tree into the cave. From behind her, she heard a guttural cry. She had been so mad with grief and rage that she hadn’t heard him approach. Tsugaru dove after the tree. He ripped the hair from his head, screaming in agony. 

Some say he died there. Others say there are two ghosts in the cave now. But everyone in the village knows to avoid the caves, and not to listen when you hear your name being called: 

_sa  
ku  
ra_

_sa_  
ku  
ra 

______

“My, that’s quite the story,” Sakura says, visibly shaken, though she tries to hide it. Again she fills the man’s cup. There’s something strange about the man’s chakra and she realizes, with a start, that he is altering his appearance.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to it,” the man says casually. So casually that she nearly expects him to pull out an orange book and…she catches herself before she gasps. Her eyes widen only a little, and she plays it off like she’s lost track of time. 

“Oh, no, I told my brothers I’d be back at the inn by now,” she says, standing. 

“Allow me to walk you,” the man, who she knows to be Kakashi, says. 

“Yes, of course,” Sakura says. She pumps her fists full of chakra, not sure if Kakashi considers her an enemy. He certainly recognizes her from the forest if not from his life in Konoha. 

They stroll through the fragrant springtime air, and Kakashi points things out. 

“Mrs. Sato owns a flower shop right here. She’s the sweetest lady, and she loves visitors.” 

“My best friend back home ran a flower shop,” she answers pleasantly. 

“I’m sure you and Mrs. Sato would have a lot of talk about,” he says. “Over there, that’s the fish market. Nothing terribly impressive, I’m afraid.” 

“Fish, ghosts, flowers. What more could a girl ask for in a future home?” Sakura jokes. 

“Well, I’m here. I suspect that’s the real draw for everyone,” he says, and they both laugh. 

“Sakura!” A voice rings out from a few blocks ahead. “Step away from him.” 

Sasuke, bathed in shadow, stands before them. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sakura says. “ _Fuck_!”

“Well, Sakura, it seems the jig is up,” Kakashi says. “Though I suspect you’ve had me figured out for a while now. If you want to discuss without all these pretenses, I’d like to meet tomorrow.” 

Sasuke flash-steps to Kakashi’s side. “He’s using a henge.” 

Sasuke first goes for a simple punch, which Kakashi ducks easily. 

“I’m thinking,” he says, lazily, like he could be reading _Icha Icha_ , “one klick north of the village? Daybreak?” 

Sakura nods at the same time Sasuke tries to sweep Kakashi’s feet from under him. Kakashi jumps to avoid it and musses her hair. Then he’s gone, _poof_ , just like all those years ago when he disappeared into thin air after she’d completed the bell test. 

With his calming presence gone, the chakra that courses through her muscles, her veins, every tendon, is rageful. And it is all focused on the man next to her. 

“You think I can’t detect a henge?” Sakura asks, her voice low. 

“You weren’t doing anything about it, so, no.” 

Sakura clenches her jaw and stalks towards the inn, Sasuke on her trail. 

“You don’t think I know what I’m doing? You don’t trust my judgement?” Sakura stomps up the stairs and, for the second time this week, rips a door clean off its hinges. She groans in frustration, and Sai watches her from the room, halfway amused. 

She sets the door aside. “Fix it,” she says to Sasuke. “It’s the least you could do.” 

“The least I could do?” Sasuke asks, indignant. 

“I’ve never been so insulted in my life! I had that entirely under control.” She feels tears streaming down her face. They are not born out of sadness but of anger, and she wipes them harshly from her cheeks. 

Sasuke doesn’t answer. He turns towards the place where the door once was and calls over his shoulder, “I’ll send Naruto over to fix it.” 

Sakura stomps around the room, livid, gathering her toiletries and grumbling under her breath. 

“The nerve--” she begins, gritting her teeth. The tears still run down her face, hot and embarrassing. 

“And after all I’ve done for--” she starts again. 

“Do you want me to beat him up?” Sai asks calmly. 

“I had Kakashi! I had him right there! And Sasuke fucked everything up!” 

“Is that true?” Naruto asks from the doorway, then calls after Sasuke. “Is that true?” 

“She was flirting with some guy using a henge,” Sasuke answers from down the hall.

Sakura balks, standing up, her mouth open, then sitting back down. She clenches and unclenches her fists. 

“And the fact that you couldn’t land a punch didn’t tip you off to anything?” Sakura asks, not believing that anyone could be this dense. 

“My taijustu has been rusty. I wasn’t going to draw attention to us by using my ninjutsu,” he answers casually. 

“Oh, well thank God you were thinking logically!” Sakura yells. “What would I have done if you hadn’t shown up?” 

“Go to bed, Sakura,” he says. 

She sees red and pushes past Naruto. She opens the door of the room next to them. Sasuke stands there, a towel around his shoulders. He’s shirtless, and if she were any less angry, she would have stopped and blushed. 

“I am your team captain,” she grinds out. 

He looks at her, an eyebrow raised, halfway between bored and expectant. 

“You will obey my orders. You will not step one foot out of line. You will do what I say, when I say it.” 

The edge of Sasuke’s lip is tilted upward, the closest he ever gets to a smile, and it occurs to her that it’s the same look he gives Naruto when he’s riled up. A little affectionate, a little condescending. “Oh?”

But she isn’t Naruto. “Don’t undermine me again,” she says, and like an afterthought, she fondly tacks on, “you fucking asshole.” 

She doesn’t see pink that spreads across his cheeks as she walks away.


	9. Chapter 9

It is an hour past daybreak and Shiro has been lounging in a tree branch for quite a while now. He thinks about checking the inn but decides against it, and he goes in and out of snoozing. The air is delicious and fresh this early, and the birds singing 

“Kakashi-sensei?” Shiro hears from below him. It’s the kunoichi, Sakura. He jumps down from his perch. 

“You keep calling me that,” he says, “but my name is Shiro. And you’re late.” 

“A black cat crossed my path and I had to go another way,” she says, like she’s enjoying some private joke. But he’s a good sport even if she’s making fun of him, and he turns to walk northeast at a relaxed pace. 

“I think most tales have a speck of truth to them, don’t you?” Shiro asks.

“I’ve been thinking about that. The story you told me last night. It reminds me of something.” 

“Tell me,” he says.

“Wait. No, first thing’s first. Shiro?” 

“Yes?”

“Do you remember me at all?” 

“Of course. You’re Sakura. I robbed you yesterday and then we drank together. Although, I suspect that you have a jutsu that keeps you from getting drunk no matter how much you drink.” 

“It’s...done with chakra control, not a jutsu,” she says, sounding dejected. “Can you tell me how you got to the village?” 

And so, as they stroll through the forest, he tells her how he woke up a while back with his head pounding on the rocky shoreline. He felt like he hadn’t had a thing to drink in weeks, and he was so hungry he was sure that his stomach was digesting itself. He stumbled through these very trees, desperately looking for edible plants or water that wasn’t from the ocean. That’s when the men started to attack. 

He had been tired and irritable, and weak as all hell. But the men had been low in skill, so Shiro would slap them around easily despite knocking on death’s door. He doesn’t know how many of the men he beat up, but finally they came to him offering food and water and a spot in their gang. With limited options, he had accepted.

Sakura nods. “Where are we going?” 

“Ah! Yes! Like I said, I think every tale has a little bit of truth. There’s caves along the coast that I’ve been wanting to investigate. I’ve been training my men, but I’d still be watching them. They’re genin-level, at best. I need to explore with a ninja who can hold their own.” 

“No,” Sakura says firmly, turning back to walk from where they came. “If this is what I think it is, we’d need my whole team to fight it.” 

“And what do you think it is, Sakura?” Shiro asks, leaning in a little. 

“I don’t want to say until I’m more certain. But my team has fought something like it before and won. I think our best course of action is to get everyone on the same page and then investigate the caves.” 

Shiro hums, considering it. “Can you control them? That wildcard, the one from last night, I don’t like him.” He means it, too. Shiro has been thinking about their scuffle last night, if you could call it that, and feels he has the man all figured out. Arrogant, pretty, probably hasn’t heard ‘no’ a whole lot in his life. Sexist enough to think his clearly intelligent superior needs defending. There’s one in every village. 

“You don’t?” Sakura asks, amused. “Maybe his genin teacher wasn’t strict enough with him.” 

They enter the village, and Shiro greets every citizen he sees. He knows each person’s name and they speak to him like he’s their oldest friend. He asks one, _how is your mother?_ and another did you get that bag of rice I sent your way? He notices Sakura’s gaze and raises an eyebrow. 

“You’ll make a great leader,” she says. 

“I don’t really see myself as the leader type,” Shiro answers, and greets an elderly woman. 

“I know,” she says, almost quietly, at the same time Kakashi looks at the old woman’s knobby knuckles and asks, “How are your joints?” 

“May I?” Sakura asks, taking the woman’s hand from Kakashi and examining it. Green chakra comes out of her fingertips, and she lightly touches the spots where the woman’s bones are crooked. When she’s done, she moves to the next hand. 

“Now, I can’t cure arthritis, but I can set it back by a few years,” she murmurs. When she’s completed her work, she beams at the woman. “There you go, good as new!” 

The woman hugs Sakura, and Shiro watches her carefully. 

“When were you going to tell me you’re a doctor?” Shiro asks. 

“Oh,” Sakura says, looking dazed, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Sorry. I haven’t felt that useful since the war. I didn’t hear what you said.” 

Shiro adds this to the list of strange things about Sakura. And finger bones are delicate. Too delicate for even an expert medical ninja to fix so quickly with just chakra. What a strange kunoichi--smart enough to spot his expert henge, with chakra control so good that it can speed her metabolism into keeping her from becoming intoxicated, strong enough to turn tree branches into splinters, precise enough to reverse a woman’s arthritis on the fly with nothing but her own chakra, and yet she is diffident in her abilities. 

She leads him up the stairs and he leans against the wall next to the door of what he assumes to be her room. She swings it open. 

“Sakura! Where did you go?” It’s the voice of the blond man. He recognizes it from the night before. 

“Did you find Kakashi again?” the handsome one drawls, the sarcasm dripping from his words. 

Shiro rolls into the doorway to stand next to the kunoichi. 

“We have a lot to talk about, boys,” she says. “And I have a theory.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto yells, springing forward. He flings his arms around his former teacher, almost girlish in his enthusiasm, and Kakashi accepts with grace. Sakura watches, a little amused and a little wistful. He doesn’t remember Naruto, of course, and his kind and quiet bemusement almost makes her laugh. 

“Sasuke, can you look him over with your Sharingan? He doesn’t remember anything before he went missing.” She is careful to avoid looking at him as she says this, worried that any smug look she might give him would be too close to gloating. 

That statement makes Naruto’s embrace stiffen. He backs away a little and looks Kakashi over. 

“It is weird that he doesn’t have a mask. Do you guys remember how hard we worked to see what was under there? All we had to do was give him amnesia,” Naruto says, cupping his chin. Kakashi raises an eyebrow under the blond’s scrutiny. 

Sasuke stands, pulls back his hair, and activates his Sharingan. “It’s...a genjutsu. Not a technique I’m familiar with, and not one that can be dispelled easily.” 

“This is not why I came here, Sakura,” Kakashi says. His voice is admonishing. “More people go missing every day. If you say I’m Kakashi, fine. But first, we have to take care of those caves.” 

“Caves?” Sai asks from the doorway.

“Yes. You see, the spot where the village stands was chosen by a pair of brothers. Tsugaru, the oldest, had a wife who fell preg--” 

“I believe that there’s a celestial being on the beach,” Sakura says, cutting off Kakashi. “I think it’s likely weak or immobile, and I think it’s drawing people in to feed off of them.” 

“That’s far more serious than we thought,” Sai says, his brow furrowed. 

“Which is why I have to report to Lady Tsunade right away. Sasuke, I’ll need you to summon a hawk. I’ll draft a message. In the meantime, please work with Kakashi on undoing this genjutsu.” 

“Why are you making me work with _him_?” Kakashi asks. “You have a talent for genjutsu, too. I can tell.” 

Sasuke’s face is incredulous for a moment and then he schools it back into its usual blank mask. 

“I never learned it. I had a very neglectful teacher back when I was a genin,” she sniffs, and walks to the room next door, planning to write her message to Lady Tsunade without four men being loud around her.

______

“I don’t know how I’m still surprised by you,” Sasuke says, finding Sakura outside. She’s watching the sunset, having just sent the hawk, and her face is painted ochre and gold in the light. She exhales in frustration.

“Those are brave words coming from a man who has committed two acts of insubordination on a mission that we aren’t even 48 hours into,” she says, not looking at him. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he says.

She laughs next to him mirthlessly. “You’re always sorry, Sasuke. You’re sorry you left the village, you’re sorry you tried to kill me. You’re sorry about the Akatsuki, sorry about Naruto’s arm. Sorry is all I hear from you on the rare occasion that you speak at all!” Those angry tears are again cutting a path down her face. She wants to hit him. She wants to hit the ground. She wants to hit the sun setting on the horizon. She wants to shatter everything. 

“I have made many mistakes,” he says, and it almost stops her in her path. But his words aren’t a show of vulnerability, she thinks. They are the truth, just like how he told the truth about being familiar with her chakra signal at her birthday party last week. 

“At least when you’re sorry, you don’t have any room to be condescending,” she nearly snarls, and a small part of her feels like she’s kicking someone who’s already down.

Sasuke doesn’t answer her. She sees something flicker in his eyes, but just as quickly it is gone. She thinks even if he yells back it would be more constructive than her ranting to what may as well be a wall. And, yes, she’ll admit that she lets her anger get the better of her sometimes, but his lack of response only fuels her. Just when she thinks things may be at a fever pitch, Sasuke deflates. Just when she thinks she might get some kind of reaction, he shuts down. What she once thought was a cool, collected persona now looks like impotence under her enraged gaze. How can he bear witness to her justified anger and be so fucking blasé about it? 

“I’m sick of sorry,” she says, and stomps off. She thinks of more clever things she could have said as she walks: _I don’t want to you to be sorry, I want you to be better._ or _I’ll accept your apology on the day you start treating me like an equal._ But what do angry words matter when they fall on deaf ears?


	11. Chapter 11

The tomoes spin in Sasuke’s eye, and Shiro stares into it, unimpressed. 

“Naruto, try sharing some chakra with Kakashi. A change in his chakra might be enough to jolt him out of it,” Sasuke says to the blond man. Naruto places a hand on Shiro’s arm. 

The two men glow red before Naruto pulls his hand away quickly, as though he is being burned. 

“There’s something really weird going on with his chakra. It feels sick somehow,” Naruto says. 

“You know, Sakura said all of this yesterday,” says the third of Sakura’s subordinates from his perch on the edge of the bed. “And she figured it out without a famous kekkei genkai.” 

Sasuke glares daggers at the third man, and Shiro has decided that he likes this third man of the group. 

“I wonder,” Shiro begins, “what someone with a modicum of intelligence could do with your ability.” 

He thinks he sees Sasuke stiffen, if, indeed, it is possible for him to be stiffer. 

“Ha, ha,” Naruto says in the most puerile tone Shiro has ever heard. “Looks like you’re not Kakashi’s favorite this time around.” 

“I’m going for a walk,” Sasuke says, punching Naruto--not gently--in the arm as he leaves. 

Shiro spies a deck of cards on one of the nightstands and retrieves it. To Naruto, he says, “Want to see something cool?” 

Shiro had learned sleight of hand from one of his own subordinates recently. It came easily to him, of course, as all shinobi have a penchant towards manual dexterity. The purpose of learning card tricks was to lay a foundation for being a good pickpocket, but impressing an overly-enthusiastic teenager (which, he thought, would serve the purpose of annoying Sasuke further) seemed like just as good a reason as any. 

He shuffles the deck and pulls a card from the top. “Queen of Spades,” he says. “See?” 

Naruto nods, and Shiro places it purposefully in the middle of the deck. He picks the next card up off the top. 

“This one is Ace of Hearts, see?” Shiro says, drawing Naruto’s attention away from the deck and to the card in his hand. “Now, I’m going to turn this card into the Queen of Spades that we put in the middle of the deck without using any jutsus whatsoever.” 

“No way,” says Naruto. 

“Ready?” Shiro asks. He shakes the hand holding the Ace of Hearts theatrically and then presents the card to Naruto. 

Lo and behold, it is the Queen of Spades. 

“How did you do that?” Naruto asks with a guileless sense of wonder. 

“I’ll show you.”

______

Naruto proves to be extremely difficult to teach. The third of Sakura’s subordinates, who Shiro had learned is named Sai, taunts him from his perch on the edge of the bed. 

“You are very bad at this, Naruto,” Sai comments happily, and Naruto grumbles under his breath. He performs the hand signs for a shadow clone and tries to perform the trick again with an extra set of hands. This adds to the confusion, causing Naruto to accidentally fling the cards into the air just as Sakura walks into the room. 

She looks at the scene with an eyebrow raised--Sai, quietly amused, two embarrassed Narutos, a deck of playing cards settling around them, and Shiro rubbing the back of his neck and looking surprisingly guilty, as though this mess, at its core, is his fault. 

After a beat, she chooses to ignore whatever was going on. 

“I’m not comfortable acting until we hear back from Lady Tsunade. It may take a day or two. We might not be able to make a move until Friday,” she says sullenly. 

“Don’t be sad. There have been worse birthdays,” Sai says mildly.

Shiro perks up. “Your birthday is in two days?” 

Sakura ignores him. “I’m not upset about fighting a monster on my birthday, I’m upset because more people are disappearing every day and there’s nothing I can do right now,” she says, sitting heavily next to Sai.

“If you’re concerned about feeling useless, you could always treat the sick people of the village, Doctor,” Kakashi says, turning away from Naruto, who is still sheepishly picking up the playing cards. “I could set you up in a tent, have people come to you. Could give you something to do until you hear back from this Tsunade person.” 

“Yes! Kakashi-sensei!” Sakura exclaims, springing up and throwing her arms around him. 

Embarrassed but pleased, Shiro pats her back awkwardly. “Is hugging a big thing in your village? First Naruto and now you,” he says, teasingly but not unkindly. 

“Sorry,” she said, releasing her grip and taking a step or two back. 

It is then that Sasuke returns, and it seems to Shiro that he’s taking great pains to avoid Sakura’s eyeline. 

“Well, I’d better go set that up for you,” Shiro says, ruffling Sakura’s hair, and Naruto’s, too, on his way out. “Goodbye, Sakura, Naruto. Sai.” 

As he rounds the corner, he hears Sai chuckle. “He really does not like you, Sasuke.” 

“Yeah, do you think that’ll hold even when he gets his memories back? That’d be funny,” comes Naruto’s loud voice. 

“Sasuke becomes an enemy of the state, again, because the future Hokage finds him annoying,” Sai muses. 

Shiro is just about out of earshot then, but he stops dead in his tracks. His eyes are round with both fear and surprise, and he braces himself against the wall. The future Hokage? _Him_? After a minute, he straightens up. There are bigger fish to fry right now; villagers are going missing. This is just another item of the growing list of things he must compartmentalize.

______

“Knock, knock,” Shiro says casually from the open doorway of Cha-iro’s meeting room. 

“Shiro! Come in,” he says amicably. 

“It seems those elite shinobi have the same goal we do. Getting to the bottom of the disappearances. I’ve offered to team up with them.” 

“Did you use a henge?” Cha-iro asks, concerned. 

“At first,” Shiro answers. “They sensed it pretty quickly, though. They’re very good.” 

“So they know you’re the one who robbed them? And they aren’t mad?” Shiro is about to answer when Cha-iro bursts into a peal of laughter. “Of course they aren’t mad. You could harm the goddamn birds from the trees!” 

“There’s another thing. They can’t take action for another day or so, and one of them is a doctor. I’m planning on setting up a triage tent for her to treat the villagers. She’s the best healer I’ve ever seen. She fixed Mrs. Sato’s arthritis with nothing but her own chakra.” 

“Is she cute?” Cha-iro asks jokingly. 

“Don’t even think about it, Old Man,” Shiro answers good-naturedly as he turns to leave. 

“We’re the same age!” Cha-iro calls after him. “Take whatever men and supplies you need. I trust you.” 

Shiro waves his hand in acknowledgment. He had chosen not to mention that the group absolutely insists that he is Kakashi Hatake, and that Kakashi Hatake is to become the next Hokage. Frankly, it is too much for Shiro to process at the moment. He collapses into his bunk, and though it’s not late, he falls asleep immediately.


End file.
